Famous
Designers and Studios

Turin,
Italy, once the global centre of car styling, has been loosing leading
edge since the early ‘90s. Although it still has the world’s biggest
independent
studios - Pininfarina, Bertone and Italdesign - plus traditional
players
like Zagato and Ghia and new comers such as IDEA and Fioravanti, car
makers
just stopped employing them and set up their own in-house studios.
Among
them, many chose California.

As
a result, California is becoming another centre of car styling. In
contrast
to Turin, California is not bounded by tradition. Sunshine, Hollywood
and
multi-culture lead to freedom of thinking hardly matched by other
places,
thus gave birth to many radical designs, especially funny cars.

However,
no matter how commercially successful it is, so far we have yet to see
any cars coming from California as beautiful as Pininfarina’s Alfa GTV
and Peugeot 406 Coupe, or anything as stunning as Gandini ever did. In
fact, the most credible in-house studios recent years are also
non-California-based,
i.e., the Britain’s Jaguar studio (think of S-Type), the French Peugeot
(206 and 607) and Alfa Romeo studio (156 and 147), the latter is also
Turin-based.

The
world of car styling is now more diversified than ever.

Italian
Designers

Pininfarina

The
biggest car styling studio in the world. Famous of designing nearly all
Ferraris since the ‘50s. Founded by Battista Pininfarina (1893-1966) in
1930 after serving Fiat as a designer and turning down offering from
Henry
Ford. He designed and coach-built many masterpieces, including the
pioneering
Cisitalia 202 which reshaped modern cars forever. Later on, he secured
the long-term partnership with Ferrari while started mass production in
his plant with Alfa Giulietta Spider.

His
son Sergio is not a designer but a business genius who led the company
to even more success. Design business spread to various Peugeot, Alfa,
Lancia and Fiat while production facilities were upscaled to provide
one-stop
service of creating special edition cars for big car makers - from
design,
body building to final assembly. These Pininfarina-built and designed
cars
include Cadillac Allante, Peugeot 205CTi, 306 Cab, 406 Coupe, Fiat
Coupe,
Alfa old Spider and new GTV/Spider. Without the support of the plants,
the company's design business would have been suffered as a result of
the
trend of in-house design.

Pininfarina’s
designs are quite versatile - from supercar Ferrari to bread-and-butter
Peugeot, from slippery Ferrari Dino to angular Alfa 164. Its designs
are
never too radical to be practical (unlike Bertone, Gandini and Gale).
On
the contrary, it is renowned for being able to inject sense of sexiness
and elegance into an ordinary car with just minor tweaks of shape and
details
- look at the magic it did to Peugeot 205 GTI, 406 Coupe, 306 Cab and
Alfa
GTV and you’ll get what I mean. That’s why it is the studio I admire
most.

One
of the big 3 studios in the world and, like Pininfarina, it has
assembly
plants. Founded by Giovanni Bertone in 1912 as a small coach-builder
and
then took over by his son Nuccio Bertone (1914-97) in 1930. Nuccio was
not a designer but he employed some greatest designers - Franco
Scaglione
(who penned Alfa Giulietta Sprint which drove Bertone to mass
production),
Giugiaro (Fiat 850 Spider), and then even more fruitful partnership
with
Marcello Gandini for 15 years, during which created Lamborghini Miura
(66),
Espada (68), Urraco (71), Countach (72), Alfa Montreal (71), Maserati
Khamsin
(72), Fiat X1/9 (73), Ferrari 308GT4 (73) and Lancia Stratos (74). In
the
80s and 90s, Bertone concentrated on the production of X1/9 and the
design
of Citroen BX (84), XM (89) and Xantia (92), then the assembly of Opel
Astra cabriolet and Fiat Punto cabriolet.

In
the past 25 years, Bertone's designs emphasised angular and wedged
shapes.
This made them looking special and futuristic but also drove customers
away, especially in the organic-fancy late 80s and 90s. Today only
Citroen
remains to be its long-term admirer. On the other hand, Opel still
employed
Bertone to build Astra Coupe.

Founded
by Giorgetto Giugiaro (1938-). Like Pininfarina, the young ingenious
joined
Fiat at the age of 17. 4 years later, he switched to the famous Bertone
studio and designed several great cars under this name (Fiat
Dino,
BMW 3.0CSL Batmobile, Fiat 850 Spider and Fiat Dino Coupe). Then he was
head-hunted by Ghia studio as design director. During the brief 2 years
of serice, he penned Maserati Ghibli and DeTomaso Mangusta. Finally he
established his own company, Italdesign, in 1968.

Unlike
Bertone, Giugiaro loves concordent designs. His cars, except the
ultra-low
Lotus Esprit, never sacrifice practicality. As a result, many
manufacturers
from the West to the East adopt his designs, including VW Golf MkI,
Fiat
Croma, Punto, Renault 21, Isuzu Piazza, Subaru SVX, Lexus GS300 and
recently
the whole line-up of Daewoo.

It
is necessary to mention that Giugiaro pioneered "tall-body" design with
Fiat Panda and Uno which have a great influence to modern car design
since
then. However, after the Uno, Giugiaro's designs lost most of the
imagination
that characterised his years in Bertone, Ghia and the early Italdesign
years. Fiat Punto Mk1, Daweoo Matiz and Msaerati 3200GT are some of the
rare attractive designs.

Unlike
Pininfarina and Bertone, the 3rd largest studio in the world has not
yet
involve manufacturing.

First
emerged as a coach-builder in 1915, Ghia started designing for customer
in 1950. In the 60s it enjoyed several glorious years with the service
of Giugiaro. The most successful designs, Maserati Ghibli and De Tomaso
Pantera, were out of those years. It was bought by Ford in 1970 and
became
part of Ford's studio. Although it remained locating in Turin, it lost
its spirit and prosperity. The "StreetKa" concept roadster shown in
year
2000 was one of the few attractive designs for years. Unluckily, Ford
eventually
closed it in 2002 in order to save money. Now the "Ghia" name just
represents
the top-spec Ford models.

Famous
designs

Maserati
Ghibli, DeTomaso
Pantera:

Zagato

Another
old Italian coach-builder. Always designs extraordinary cars. You'll
either
love them or hate them (for me, it's the latter case). No much business
now, although still independent.

Famous
designs

Aston Martin
DB4 GT, Aston
Martin Vantage Zagato, Alfa Romeo SZ/RZ:

Marcello
Gandini

Marcello
Gandini (1943-) started career as a designer in 1965, taking the
vacancy
Giugiaro left in Bertone. During 15 years of service, he gave birth to
many greatest sports car designs of the century, including Lamborghini
Miura, Countach, Espada, Urraco and Maserati Khamsin. After that, he
became
a self-employed stylist and continued creating some other fabulous cars
such as Lamborghini Diablo (modified by Chrysler), Cizeta V16T and
Bugatti
EB110.

Undoubtedly,
his designs are very aggressive, imaginative and futuristic, very
suitable
to supercars but usually has to sacrifice practicality (such as lack of
headroom, poor visiblity, difficult entry and poor aerodynamics).
Nearly
all his designs, bar Miura, were loyal to his love affair of angular
and
wedge profile, even until his very latest car, Qvale Mangusta. So far
he
has yet to prove his talent in designing mainstream production cars.

Fioravanti
(1939-), the man behind Pininfarina during its golden years. During his
24 years service in Pininfarina, he designed 8 Ferraris by himself,
including
the masterpieces like Dino, Daytona, 308GTB and BB, plus guided another
5, such as the aerodynamic layout of Testarossa. Unlike many nowadays
stylists,
Fioravanti is also an aerodynamic expert - he started life in
Pininfarina
as aerodynamist - which explained why his designs could be kept
original
throughout the production adaptation process.

After
leaving Pininfarina in 1988, he briefly joined Fiat and then started
his
own little studio in Turin, primarily design houses and gardens.
However,
in 1998 a Ferrari-style concept sports car called Fioravanti F100 was
shown,
indicating his intention to return to the automotive world.

Among
his designs, Fioravanti loves the Daytona most.

Famous
designs

Ferrari Dino,
308GTB,
Daytona, Berlinetta Boxer:

British
Designers

William
Lyons

Sir William
Lyons (1901-1985),
the legendary founder of Jaguar. He styled Jaguar SS, XK120 and
virtually
all Jaguar saloons until and including the first XJ by himself. Under
his
guidance, his right-hand designer Malcolm Sayer created C, D and
E-type.
All these designs are regarded as classics today. It should be noted
that
the first car by Sayer himself in post-Lyons era was the odd-looking
XJ-S
coupe, reflecting how important Lyons' direction was. The modernised
XJ6
in 1986 was also criticised as too bland. The world lost Lyons' classic
style until Geoff Lawson revived it in the 90s.

Among all his
designs, Lyons
preferred the XJ most.

Famous
designs

Jaguar SS100,
XK120, XJ6:

Geoff
Lawson

Geoff Lawson
(1945-2000)
was the man who succeeded to reintroduce Sir Lyons’ classic style into
modern Jaguars. After serving Vauxhall and GM, he joined Jaguar as
chief
designer in 1984, from then to his sudden death (due to stroke) he
designed
all the Jaguars launched, including the sexy XJ220 supercar, the
elegant
XJ6/8 restyle, the popular XK8, the most successful S-Type and the
yet-to-be-born
X-Type. The nose of S-Type was particularly his greatest achievement.

Famous
designs

Jaguar XJ220,
S-Type:

Peter
Stevens

From the
beginning Peter
Stevens (1945-) prefers to work as a free-lance designer, but that
didn’t
stop him from taking opportunities. In the late 80s and early 90s he
styled
some of the best shapes of the time - Lotus Elan M100, Jaguar XJR-15
and
McLaren F1. However, since then he did not have too much luck, just
tweaked
aerodynamic kits for Hyundai, Proton etc.

In 99 and 2000,
he secured
posts in Prodrive and Rover as design chief but still hardly called
full-time
posts.

Famous
designs

Jaguar XJR-15,
Lotus Elan
M100, McLaren F1:

American
Designers

Harley
Earl

Harley Earl
(1893-1969)
had the greatest influence to American cars design from the 30s to 60s
through his leadership in GM styling department. He started career in
his
father's coach builder, designing customer body works. Having designed
a body work for Cadillac LaSalle, he was given the job in GM and set up
the industry's first in-house styling department - Art and Colour
Section.
Since then he led the department to grow and supervised the design of
some
35 million cars produced. He also pioneered concept cars with Buick Y
job.

His designs -
though far
from being my favourite - emphasised long, wide, low, chrome details,
wrap-around
windshield and aircraft-inspired tail fins, all characterised the
American
cars in the "good old days". However, it also prove his ignorance to
engineering
principles, making American cars suffered from notorious handling and
criticised
by some artists as exaggerative and over-decorated. Even after retired,
his principles of "long and wide" extended to the muscle cars era of
the
60s and early 70s, hence putting American cars in deep trouble during
oil
crisis.

Tom
Gale

Thomas Gale
(1943-) is responsible
for the imaginative Chrysler line-up from late 80s to the whole 90s.
After
graduated with a degree in Engineering, he joined Chrysler as body
engineer
and eventually came up as head of design in 1985. His designs are
mostly
characterised by radical, emotional and sometimes retro shapes, such as
Dodge Viper, Plymouth Prowler, Dodge Ram Pickup and PT Cruiser, but
there
are also some advanced yet practical designs like the Dodge Intrepid,
Chrysler
300M, Dodge Neon and Chrysler Cirrus, whose "Cab-forward" theme
benefits
cabin room.